1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for improving problem determination, and more particularly, methods, computer program and systems for analyzing database performance reports and summarizing information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Problem diagnosis in a distributed database environment is a challenging task for multiple reasons, namely having too little or too much information about the database, problems occurring at multiple nodes, inability to examine the problem as it happens, etc. Typically, a database system collects system information during normal operation. Often, problems appear for a limited amount of time to disappear before being diagnosed only to reappear again in the future. A slow response time is one such example. By the time the problem is reported and the database engineer begins problem diagnosis, the problem has disappeared and reliance on logged system information is a must.
Unfortunately, system information in the form of a database performance report is usually very extensive and finding the problem requires a large amount of time. Since a large amount of data must be analyzed, the diagnosis engineer must spend considerable effort to look at logged data, without an easy way of knowing if the logged data is within an acceptable range. Moreover, information obtained from different nodes has to be correlated sometimes, as one problem source can affect different nodes, such as a faulty network switch. This only compounds the problem and increases the time required for problem resolution.
It is in this context that embodiments of the invention arise.